Laundromat Refuge

There’s something energizing about a laundromat.  It might be the constant buzz of static electricity in the air.  I can see how that could affect the electrical firings in the brain.  A room crowded with agitating machines and low income mothers.  Mother’s with meat on their bones and callused hands from ritualistic stain removal.  They use precise measurements of soap, 1.25 dryer sheets per load – ratios that are tried and true.

My affection for this radioactive washroom is influenced by the fact that I’ve been spoiled by a diligent middle class mother for so long.  The laundromat, in our household at least, is an infrequent destination.  It means our home washing unit has sprung a leak or wiggled itself into a malfunction of sorts.

There’s a sense of Zen amongst the twirling chaos of a public laundry room.  An unstated rule of acceptance; everyone is dressed in their absolute worst.  Back of the closet attire; old, worn, mismatched, stained, ill-fitting – all appropriate under the guise of, “It’s Laundry Day.” And here we sit, together, without judgment, hypnotized by the single white sock in my load of dark clothes.  With every tumbling rotation, there it is again, reminding me of my incompetence.

I’m no professional in this arena.  My glowing blue soap sloshes out of the cup and trickles down the side of the machine.  Dryer sheets are an afterthought rather than an integral piece of the recipe.  Warm water for whites, cold water for darks, that’s as far as my rules go.

Bilingual signs advise me not to sit on the machines.  I sit on them anyway.  With no one to enforce the rules, my inner nihilist flares up.  I’m a true spin-cycle revolutionary.  If your machines can take my quarters, they can take my weight.

My mind drifts off with the meditative hum of the dryers.  I wonder what the owner of a laundromat does with all of the accumulated lint.  There must be mountains of it, fibrous and light, packed into a storage room somewhere.  There’s no way it goes straight to the garbage.  Maybe they re-appropriate it, turn it into itchy Christmas sweaters or use it as stuffing for claw machine teddy bears.  No wonder kids’ noses are constantly running.  Laundromat induced allergies, via the stuffed bear. 

In the end, maybe it’s all a ploy to fatten the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies.  Procter and Gamble are in on the conspiracy; buying primetime advertising slots, pushing Tide “Clean Breeze” into lower class homes. Or maybe I’m just stoned, sitting in a laundromat, on a Tuesday, fiddling my pinky toe through a hole in my sock.